Mar-a-Lago, Real and Imagined

On January 29, 2014, long before any of us had any idea that Donald Trump would be elected President, my Quail Ridge Garden Club sponsored a tour of a famous estate in Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago (Latin for “sea to lake”). We were interested in the gardens we could see from Highway A-1-A and lunch in the spiffy Club. Now this historic property is the setting for a new novel by Carl Hiaasen, Squeeze Me. Reading this tall tale about its current occupants inspired me to review my photos and notes.

Mar-a-Lago, a 126-room villa, was built 1924-27 by Marjorie Merriweather Post, heir to the Post Cereal fortune who was then married to E.F. Hutton. A horrific hurricane in September 1926 imposed challenges, but Post kept her local and imported workers employed until the project was finished. The main house, an adaptation of Spanish-Moorish style villas found on the Mediterranean, is anchored to a coral reef with steel and concrete and has successfully resisted hurricanes for 90 years. The property extends from the Atlantic Ocean on the east to the Intracoastal Waterway on the West. Here’s an overview.

Our tour guide, Anthony Senecal, former butler to Post and then Historian for Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, was associated with Mar-a-Lago from 1959 until 2016, when the Trump campaign had to disavow his outrageous tirades against Obama. Senecal died in April 2020. We heard no tirades in 2014, but two of his stories were particularly interesting:

1. When the Huttons’ daughter Dina embarked on an acting career, her father asked her not to use the Hutton name. Instead she chose the name of his foremost competitor and became Dina Merrill.
2. Dina Merrill and her half-sisters priced their mother’s property at $40 million in the 1980s and refused Trump’s initial offer of $25 million. Senecal said that Trump eventually got it for $8 million; others say $10 million. Below is a photo of the Ballroom in which our guide said Trump invested at least $44 million. It is a prime spot for charity events.  Senecal often compared Mar-a-Lago to another Post domicile, Hillwood Estate, which I loved to visit in DC.

For photos of the real Mar-a-Lago I took in 2014, click here.

In his novel, Squeeze Me, Carl Hiaasen names his imaginary “Winter White House” Casa Bellicosa. He posits the Secret Service’s code name for the President as Mastodon; for the First Lady, Mockingbird. My friend Susan called from Texas last Friday to recommend this book, saying she thought it a welcome relief from election news. When I picked it up at Barnes & Noble on Saturday, another customer exclaimed, “I just read that book. It was hilarious!” I finished it a day later.

Hiaasen is a native Floridian who knows Florida geography, people, and animals well–from the exclusive clubs of Palm Beach to a tiny island in the Everglades where invasive Burmese Pythons are ready to travel north. Hiaasen names the President’s fan club, the POTUSsies. They are straight out of the weekly “Notables” page of the Palm Beach Post, but with telling backstories. The plot is intricate, but plausible. I couldn’t help but admire the  persistent heroine. The language is really dirty, but also, regrettably, plausible.

I have heard no report that members of the First Family actually read books. If any delve into this one, they will not be pleased with the grotesque reflections they see in the mirror Hiaasen has crafted. He also shines light on the moral choices the Secret Service must make to keep up morale. When Covid permits, come visit and I’ll show you the perimeters, at least, of where the action takes place! Meanwhile, here’s a link to an NPR interview with Hiaasen last month and here’s the New York Times’ enthusiastic review.